A fascinating drama has been playing out in the town of Fitzgerald, Georgia since 2019 – and it centers around a giant chicken topiary.

Fitzgerald is a small southern town with less than 9,000 human residents and approximately 5,000 wild Burmese chicken residents who roam the streets at will. According to the University of Georgia’s local Extension Office, Fitzgerald’s feathered population first migrated to the town in the 1960’s when the Georgia Department of Natural Resources released flocks of Burmese chickens at the Ocmulgee River “as a game bird for hunting”. For unknown reasons, the chickens left their riverside location and settled in downtown Fitzgerald, where they have remained and continued to multiply ever since.

In 2019, Jim Puckett – the mayor of Fitzgerald at the time –– hatched a plan to increase tourism and leverage the town’s reputation as a wild chicken haven by building the world’s largest chicken topiary, which would also feature a honeymoon suite for overnight guests.

With $150,000 in grant funding from Fitzgerald’s “special purpose local option sales tax”, the town hired Tennessee-based artist Topiary Joe to design and construct a 62-foot-tall topiary/bed and breakfast in the shape of a giant chicken. Doesn’t every small town need a giant chicken topiary that can accommodate overnight guests?

When the plan for the chicken topiary was featured in the Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio, Mayor Puckett assured residents the project was already showing a return on investment by putting Fitzgerald on the map as a tourist destination.

I first learned about the Chicken Topiary project in April 2021 when I traveled to Fitzgerald with my friends Su Ecenia and Robin Safley to do the 75-mile Wild Chicken Gravel Ride. We had been told there would be wild chickens roaming the streets – and they really were everywhere – but when we pulled into town, we were blown away by the 62-foot-tall steel “skeleton” of a chicken in a vacant lot next to the parking area. It was an impressive sight – and of course we had to take photos so our friends back home would believe us when we described it.

We were even more excited when we learned about the plan to cover the outside of the steel frame with live plants and build a bed and breakfast on the inside. I couldn’t wait to return to Fitzgerald when the project was finished so I could spend a night inside a giant chicken topiary.

The steel frame of the chicken was completed in mid-2021, but by then, the estimated costs to add the topiary “skin” and bedroom suite had soared to twice the original budget allocated for it. These cost overruns ruffled the feathers of many Fitzgerald residents and the topiary opponents clucked angrily in opposition to its completion. The 2021 mayoral election became a chicken referendum, pitting pro-Topiarists against anti-Topiarists.

On election day, the town’s incumbent mayor and chief Chicken Topiary advocate was soundly defeated by Jason Holt, who received 91 percent of the vote. Further work on the Giant Chicken was halted until the new mayor took office in January 2022.

But after being sworn in, Mayor Holt faced a difficult dilemma: what do you do with a 62-foot-tall steel skeleton of a chicken that will likely cost just as much to dismantle as it would to transform into something useful and attractive?

It took several months, but a decision was finally made to scale back the original vision for the giant chicken topiary/bed and breakfast and give the bird a few (less expensive) finishing touches. Work on the modified plan began in January 2024, and since then, the frame around the neck and head have been illuminated with multi-colored strands of lights.

The 62-foot-tall chicken that once divided the residents of Fitzgerald now serves as a sort of landlocked lighthouse for the town, and an homage to the chickens that make it a unique place to live. Maybe it’s even a symbol of civic compromise, which is certainly worth flapping your wings about these days!

I gleaned a lot from the story of the giant chicken topiary of Fitzgerald. I was inspired by the bold creativity that gave birth to the original idea – and the courage required to move forward with it. And while I appreciate the fiscal constraints that brought the project to a halt, I am thankful the town was able to create a compromise plan to move forward with a modified design.

Creativity and imagination are the seeds that produce our dreams. Sometimes those seeds flower into exactly what we imagined, and sometimes they produce something else. The important thing is to keep planting seeds and give them the water and sunlight they need.

As Einstein said, “imagination is more important than knowledge”.

“All who are skilled among you are to come and make everything the Lord has commanded” Exodus 35:10